Airbnb 2022 Summer Release: What you need to know

[Airbnb]

Our 2022 Summer Release represents the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade. We’re introducing:

• Airbnb Categories: A new way to search that makes it easy for guests to discover millions of homes they never knew existed

• Split Stays: An innovative feature that pairs two listings when a guest searches for a longer stay

• AirCover: The most comprehensive protection in travel, included for free with every stay

Get all the details on the Resource Center, and tell us: Will you be updating your listing for Airbnb Categories and Split Stays? How will you update it?

[Ken1852]

I'm pretty sure this orchestrated. They're looking to thin the herd in a big way. 

[Natasha-and-John0]

How would this be lucrative? More expensive listings but less of them? People sell their homes in dire straits then Black Rock buys them?

[Ken1852]

Airbnb has been losing money every year since 2019, im pretty sure. The only people any company is concerned with are the shareholders and the CEO. The shareholders aren't happy. Airbnb also has a horrible reputation as community destroyers. Why employ thousands upon thousands of people and have people up in arms about you and lose money? Get rid of the smaller places, 3/4 of your staff, and focus solely on expensive properties off the beaten path instead. All problems for him and his shareholders solved. This isn't going to change. This has been years in the making. 

[Natasha-and-John0]

My question is who can afford 17k a night on an ongoing basis?

[Ken1852]

Read the article. They're mainly focusing on places away from neighborhoods. A lot of those places are expensive but not the majority.

[Nancy1633]

@Ken1852 

So that explains it.

Chesky wants to "sprinkle"  tourists away from their search destination-- which he presumes must be an overcrowded, tourist destination.  So he dilutes the search by zooming the map out miles away from the place searched, omitting many properties.  Quite an admission-- he is redirecting business from countless Hosts. Intentionally. Brian has decided whose business shall live and whose shall die. Quite a way to repay loyal partners. 

I guarantee he will lose more business from travelers frustrated with AirBnb's 'bossy' search, than he will gain, while screwing over so many who made his concept successful.

Of course, he had to expect the blowback he's getting but just doesn't care . 

[Ken1852]

Yep. We made him wealthy but now we're a burden.  I don’t think he's looking to gain more customers. In my opinion, this is only the first step before it becomes a pay to play platform for exclusive properties. He will do just fine and so will his shareholders and that's all that matters.

[Ken1852]

This article will help you understand the veiled purpose of the new launch.

https://time.com/6175183/airbnb-aims-to-solve-overtourism-are-tweaks-to-its-app-enough/

[Mark116]

@Ken1852 If this is their strategy, it is naive, bordering on moronic, to believe that tweaking the search engine to drive traffic away from high density tourist destinations is going to in any serious way mitigate the jeopardy Airbnb is in due to government regulations.  They would have been better off spending the millions on a legislative strategy to combat anti STR then some useless PR fig leaf of a search engine.

@Nancy1633  I do think that this new search function will fail.  People spend a lot of money on their vacations and if they can't find what they want in terms of location on Airbnb then they will go back to a traditional hotel or find a platform like VRBO that gives them the options in a straightforward manner.  I've done some sample searches and for me, this new version is unsuable.  There is no reason why I should spend an hour trying to perfect a search or figure out the search engine, and still getting poor results,  when I can just go to expedia and VRBO and find a selection in 2 minutes.

[Ken1852]

@Mark116 It is pretty weird but that article pretty much spells out what they're doing.

[Nancy1633]

@Mark116 

That's exactly what my sister did: started her search on AirBnb for a mid-week getaway, met with AirBnb's forced arbitrary "reserved" week while being diverted outside of her search location, then fled the site. She booked on VRBO instead.  No fuss, no mess. 

[Natasha-and-John0]

I’m waiting to get on Vrbo , they claim they will call and synch my two platforms together. 
has anyone gotten an intelligent answer from Airbnb yet?

[Ted307]

@Natasha-and-John0 

No answer from Air, because I saw everyone here complaining, so I went on VRBO and got a call back the next day from an nice rep in Texas. They copied the photos, and the price from the Air BnB listing, and said they could link the calendars to avoid double booking. I will have to change the price, they took the average price. But, it saved re-uploading my photos. I am still in the process of taking fresh photos, so I will be changing it some, but it is a good start! No more all of our eggs in Air BnB's basket!

Chris

[Suzanne302]

@Ken1852 

Or, Airbnb has been quietly investing in unique properties and is trying to push stays at properties they own.

[Jeremy785]

This would be funny if it weren’t costing so many of us money! See this great message I finally received from support- after they ignored me for 4 1/2 days. 

“ Hi Jeremy.

This is Kyle from Airbnb, I am sorry for the inconvenience, I tried to check your listings in our Airbnb website and it is actually showing.

The status of the listing is active, you can check it by just searching for the city and state, and then go to page 10 and there you can see your listing.

Let me know if you have questions, I will be happy to assist you further.

Regards,
Kyle”

So you see? Their new search feature is working perfectly! All I need to do is search for my exact city and then go to page 10 of the listings- and boom! There it is! 🙄